Beloved people of
God, grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.
AMEN.

For Christmas I
sent my uncles Orin and Emery a copy of my book Coming Home to Earth. I wasn’t sure how
interested they would be in reading it. Orin has been struggling with his
eyesight, so I wasn’t even sure he would be able to read it. But I knew they
would at least be proud that their nephew had published a
book.

At the end of the
Christmas season I like to read through in a leisurely way all our Christmas
cards and letters. Emery and my aunt Nancy always send a nice letter updating us
on their family. This year was no exception. I was almost ready to recycle it,
when I noticed a handwritten note on the back. It was from Nancy:

Dear Mark, I have
fond memories of the first time we ever saw you. Your mom + dad were at the
seminary in St.
Paul + had invited us up for supper. We got lost (but
that’s another whole story!) + when we did finally arrive you were out in
the front yard, down on all fours, licking water out of a mud puddle! You
announced that you were a dog! That memory of you has brought me many smiles
over the years. Maybe that taste of muddy water was the beginning of your
environmental journey? Thanks so much for your book. The whole world needs to
read it!

Love to you, Donna
+ all your family, Nancy

Today is Baptism
of Jesus Sunday. I want to talk about a journey I have been on that began even
earlier than when Emery and Nancy noticed me lapping up water from that mud
puddle. This journey is a journey of faith. It began not in a puddle, but in a
pool of water in the baptismal font in the front of Our Savior’s LutheranChurch in Iola, Wisconsin, on April 28, 1957. I was seven
weeks old at the time, so my parents did not have to worry yet about me wanting
to play in the water. I assume the water in the font was freshly
poured.

I am sure it was a
special occasion for my parents and the congregation. It must have been
heart-warming for them to hear the pastor pronounce— “Mark, I baptize you in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”— and then to have him anoint
me with the sign of the cross and say— “Mark, child of God, you have been sealed by
the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ
forever.”

Donna and I have
been raising children for over 35 years. Our favorite bedtime ritual with our
children has been to make the sign of the cross on their foreheads and say to
them: “You are God’s special child, and
God loves you very, very much.” All six of our children have appreciated
this ritual, too. It has reminded them that they are baptized, dearly loved,
children of God.

This year we are
observing the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. In 1517 Martin
Luther posted his 95 Theses on the
door of the CastleChurch in Wittenberg, Germany. That act has been viewed as
a catalyst for the Reformation movement. One practice Luther did not reform was
infant baptism. As Dan Erlander observes, Luther viewed “infant baptism as the purest and most
beautiful picture of God’s gracious and unconditional love.”[1]Some later reformers thought Luther did not go far enough, and they did away
with baptizing infants. But our Lutheran tradition has kept this practice. We
too tend to see an infant at the font as a beautiful picture of God’s
love.

The event at the
font— what we might call “the bath”— is what we tend to think of as baptism. It
is a one-time event in which God declares God’s unconditional love for us. To
rebaptize someone would imply that God did not mean it the first
time.

But the total
baptismal experience includes a second part— a lifetime process of growing in
our faith and learning the way of life of those who follow Jesus. From the day
we are baptized until the day we die we are on a journey of faith. That is true
whether we are baptized as infants or as older children or
adults.

In our Lutheran
tradition we teach that there are two sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy
Communion. Luther taught that sacraments have three elements: God’s word of
promise, a visible sign, and faith. According to Luther through baptism God
promises us forgiveness of sins, redemption from death and the devil, and
eternal salvation. To put it another way, God promises to love us for a lifetime
and beyond.

In the case of
baptism the visible sign is water. Water is the most common element in our
lives. Approximately 60% of our body is water. Over 70% of Earth is covered with
water. We can go several weeks without food. But we can only go about three days
at most without water. Water is also essential for cleansing. The waters of
baptism are a sign of God’s love washing in and over us every moment of our
lives.

Faith is the third
essential element in baptism. Apart from faith our baptism would have no power
in shaping how we live our lives. Faith is trust in God’s promises. In a
marriage relationship it makes so much difference if you know your spouse loves
you. It makes all the difference in the world if we know we are loved by God.
Faith is confidence that we are indeed loved unconditionally by
God.

It is so easy to
let our sins and shortcomings get us down. It can be hard to imagine when we are
down on ourselves that God or a loved one actually loves us. We may feel
unworthy of their love.

Baptism is God’s
assurance that God is journeying with us through all that life may bring. God
works with us in the struggle against sin. Despite being cleansed in the waters
of baptism, our lives will inevitably get muddied along the way. God does not abandon us when our lives get murky. God will confront us so
that we know where we have sinned or gone astray. God will suffer with us
through the consequences of our sin and shortcomings. God will extend
forgiveness to us. God will seek to bring healing and wholeness to
us.

What loving parent
does not want the best for their child when they bring their child to the font?
In baptism God declares that God wants the best for the one who is being
baptized. Baptism is God’s one time commitment that extends for a
lifetime.

Baptism has been
misused at times in our Christian tradition to separate the saved from the
damned. We teach that baptism is the assurance of salvation. We do not have to
worry about our salvation as we journey through life. We will have to deal with
all sorts of uncertainties. But we can count on God’s
love.

When Jesus was
baptized by John in the River Jordan, a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.” Or taking a cue from Isaiah 42:1, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I
delight.” John the Baptist wondered why he should be baptizing Jesus. For
Jesus his baptism marked the beginning of his ministry. It was so important to
him to be assured that he was God’s beloved Son and that God delighted in him.
Those who of us who were baptized as infants may not remember the event, but
knowing we are baptized reassures us that we are beloved children of God and
that God delights in us. God wanted that knowledge, that confidence, deeply
imbedded in Jesus; and God wants that confidence deeply imbedded in all who
follow Jesus. Imbedding that knowledge in us is a crucial aspect of baptism. But
we are never simply baptized for our own sake. We are baptized for a
purpose.

Jesus was baptized
to carry out his God-given mission. In Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus
the descent of the Spirit of God upon him reveals that the fulfillment of the
servant promised in Isaiah 42. In Isaiah 42:1 the Lord makes clear what the
servant’s mission is: “I have put my
spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” Isaiah 42:4
indicates that the servant will be relentless in establishing justice: “He will not grow faint or be crushed until
he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his
teaching.”

As baptized
children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, an essential part of our journey
of faith is to take up this mission of establishing justice. Baptized children
of God will work for social justice, economic justice, racial justice, and
ecological justice. That is who we are. That is an essential aspect of our
identity.

Frankly our
Lutheran tradition has not always excelled or even focused on establishing
justice. The people of St. Andrew have a solid track record in doing ministry.
But like many other congregations we have some growing to do in what it means to
establish justice. This year as we celebrate the 500th Anniversary of
the Reformation, it is a fitting time for God’s beloved children at St. Andrew
to focus on establishing justice.

One of the reasons
we may shy away from establishing justice is because it can get muddy at times.
We are more comfortable with the pure waters of baptism that fill the font. When
we venture forth on our journey of faith, the waters of baptism can get
murky.

At the end of the
Gospel of Matthew Jesus gives his disciples the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And
remember, I am with you always, to the end of the
age.”

The good news is
that our Lord’s love for us is sure even as we journey through the muddier
waters of seeking to establish justice. We can count on the Lord being with us
every step of the way on our lifetime journey of faith.